Sara Walker is co-author on a new paper just out in the Royal Society of Chemistry's Molecular Biosystems titled "Prebiotic Network Evolution: Six Key Parameters". The paper outlines paths forward for realizing prebiotic networks in the laboratory and studying their evolutionary capacity. More here.

Emergence@ASU grad student Alyssa Adams will be delivering an exciting public lecture titled "Will Robots be the End of the Human Race?" on Mon. Oct. 26th!

When: Next Monday (26 Oct) at 10amWhere: Renaissance Theater at the Tuscany Falls Clubhouse (16222 W. Clubhouse Drive, Goodyear, AZ)Tickets: $4 at the door. I'm seeing if I can get free tickets for friends :)

Here is a quick description of the talk:Scientist Stephen Hawking has suggested that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Currently, many scientists are building better and smarter robots in hope of achieving sentience, which is the pinnacle of true artificial intelligence. Many are questioning the consequences of performing such research, and ultimately we need to know if Hawking is right. Will technology rise up and extinguish human life?Today, robots are used for a wide variety of tasks. Many of these tasks are dedicated to doing work that we may not enjoy doing ourselves, such as washing dishes, driving cars or bringing out the garbage. Other tasks include large amounts of data processing or mimicking human interactions for social pleasure. We are dependent on robots, but is our dependence a tradeoff for power?True artificial intelligence may not be possible with the science we are using right now. But if it were possible, will humanity be ready to face the moral, ethical and political responsibilities required to embrace artificial intelligence? What would cause higher-evolved technology to extinguish humanity? We will explore the many ways scientists are trying to answer these questions.

Emergence@ASU members Sara Walker, Hyunju Kim and Alyssa Adams will be presenting our group's research at the American Physical Society 4 Corners meeting held at Arizona State University Oct. 16th - 17th, 2015! Talks presented include: